Towards Taking Better Photos

How often do you look at a photo and think to yourself that if only you could afford a really good camera you’d be able to shoot photos just like it? The truth is that having a great camera will only help you so much.

Often, the rest comes down to understanding the tools you’ve got available to you.

A photographer was invited to a friend’s home for dinner and asked to bring along some of their photos to show.

Everyone oohed and aaahed at the wonderful photos.

The hostess said, “These photos are great! You must have a really good camera.”

The photographer looked a little perturbed but said nothing.

They all sat down to a lovely dinner and everyone had a great time.

As the photographer was leaving, he said to the hostess, “That was a terrific meal! You must have really good pots and pans.”

It’s a joke that seems to do the rounds from time to time and serves to illustrate a different perspective on the quality of the result versus quality of the tools used to obtain that result.

A cook who understands flavours and combinations, how to use ingredients, and has experience at applying these skills can put together a delicious meal even using the simplest of kitchen utensils. At the same time, a cook lacking in these skills can find a way to burn water.

The same sort of thing holds true for photography. It holds true for far more than just photography and cooking for that matter.

Anyone who understands their craft and their tools can consistently achieve good results.

Nick Moir judged the recent ABC Open “Up Close” project. While he almost certainly has some really expensive camera gear, he also posts photos shot on a smart phone via Twitter every day.

Does that mean you don’t have to go out and buy that expensive camera?

Not exactly.

Good quality tools help to produce good quality results.

A simple point-and-shoot camera offers few opportunities to control the photo. They usually have limited lens capabilities and limited control over the actual photo. For example, you’ll rarely be able to set a shutter speed or aperture and often can’t even use manual focusing.

Once you start thinking about your photos as being more than a record of where you went, what you did, or who was there, taking control of your photos becomes more important. This is where stepping up from a point-and-shoot camera and into a digital SLR comes into it’s own.

In common with the point-and-shoot camera, a DSLR will offer you a “set and forget” fully automated shooting mode. It’ll focus automatically and it’ll set the exposure so that the subject is well exposed. If you’re lucky, the camera will work out what the subject of your photo is and set both focus and exposure accordingly. Unlike a point-and-shoot camera, though, the DSLR allows you to more easily see that it may not have focused on the right thing and allow you to fix it.

It’s when you start to move away from shooting in fully automatic modes that you’ll really start to find that remarkable photo.

Taking a DSLR off full auto can seem a bit daunting. Suddenly you’ve got to care much more about aperture, shutter speed, ISO, focal length and all sorts of other terms that aren’t comfortable.

The good news is that most DSLR’s are designed with you in mind. They help you ease away from full auto while still allowing the camera to help you get that good photo. Mostly, this is achieved by not expecting you to take an “all or nothing” approach. Not using full auto doesn’t immediately require you to set everything manually. Instead, there’s ways to selectively take control of only one, or a few, aspects of your photo and leave the rest up to the camera to work out.

For starters, you can disable automatic focus. Auto-focus typically makes sure that the centre of your photo is in focus. The cleverer cameras will choose the largest object in the frame and focus that.

But there’s all sorts of possibilities for a great photo where the centre of frame, or largest object, is out of focus. Imagine shooting through the leaves of a tree at a subject. You can create a framing effect by having the foreground leaves out of focus while having a person in the background sharply focused.

At this point it shouldn’t come as a surprise to learn that you can often also step away from a fully automated exposure without having to come to grips with fully manual settings. Most DSLR’s have a number of semi-auto exposure modes that give you increased control and the potential for more interesting photos in different circumstances.

The most common semi-auto modes are aperture and shutter preferred, but your camera may well have more than this. Check the manual that came with your camera to see if that’s the case for you.

Aperture preferred automatic allows you to set the aperture, or f-stop, and let your camera select a shutter speed to match.

If you’re taking photos of a subject that isn’t really moving around much then using aperture mode lets you play around with how much of the photo will be in focus (this is called depth of field). The larger the f-stop, the smaller the aperture, and the more of your photo will be in focus.

You might think that the goal here is to have as much as possible in focus. But frequently you’ll find interesting photos at the other end of the scale. By using a small f-stop you end up with only the subject of your photo in focus and everything else blurry. This tends to force the eye onto the subject and reduce distractions.

Shutter preferred automatic, as you’ve probably worked out now, lets you set your shutter speed and let the camera choose an aperture that’ll keep the shot properly exposed.

Use this mode to take photos dealing with motion - either stopping motion or conveying it. A fast shutter speed will stop something moving fast dead in it’s tracks. For example, a horse galloping across a paddock.

Shutter preferred is often thought of as a way to stop motion but it’s also a way to deliberately convey motion through blurring. For example, a photo of traffic at a slower shutter speed can give you a photo where the background is sharply focused but with traffic in motion in the foreground. All those night shots where a highway is just a blur of lights are achieved through using slow shutter speeds.

Taking a great photo isn’t always about the super-sharp, brightly-lit shot. Sometimes it’s the flowing water in a fast flowing creek (shutter preferred auto with a slow shutter speed) or the face of a loved one framed by flowers in the foreground (aperture preferred with a small f-stop).

Once you understand how these modes work you’ll find that you spend far more time using them than that fully-auto “set and forget” mode because they allow you to take more control of the shot. You can pick the mode best suited to the result you’re seeking. Next time you’re out taking photos, why not pick a semi-auto mode and play around with the results you get.

Find an interesting shot, select aperture preferred mode and then vary your f-stop. Study the results and see which ones you like best. Do the same for shutter preferred, especially if there’s movement in your subject. You’ll be amazed at the variations you can get just by changing one element of your photo.

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Comments

David Freeman

I haven't shot anything for the Light Painting project yet. It's on my list. :)
If you're interested, I post photos to Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/tismy_photostream - from time to time.
Thanks for the nice comments.

emily bissland

I really like the comparison here of photography and cooking. And your mention of shutter speed is perfect with ABC Open's latest photography theme of Light Painting ... have you done one yet David? I'd love a hyperlink to some of your work if you dont mind sharing ....?

Gemma Deavin

What a great set of tips David. Thank you for sharing. I like your point about trying to get out of the 'set and forget' pattern. This is great inspiration for clickers to take back some more control in their image making. I will certainly be using it too!